Impressionism and Post-Impressionism

Yesterday while here in Paris, the wife and I checked out the Orsay Museum in Paris. It is composed primarily of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, which covers a time period from about the mid-1850’s to 1914 (right up to the start of the first World War).

I wanted to go to this museum because ever since I started learning about art, I discovered I kind of like (some types of) Impressionism.

For you see, after the invention of the camera in the 1800’s, artists suddenly found themselves in competition with photographers as to who could create the most realistic recreations of real things. Artists realize they couldn’t beat photographers because the turnaround time between a painting and photograph was so disproportionally in favor of the photograph. So, artists realize they had to evolve.

And evolve they did.

They started(ish) with Impressionism. Impressionism takes a real scene and rather than painting a replica, it capture the essence or an impression of the original.

Some are more definitive like this:

Others are a bit more abstract like this:

And others yet are even more Impressionist, like these:

And below is one of Monet’s more famous paintings:

You can still see what’s there and what’s supposed to be drawn, yet these are clearly not exact recreations of the original subject matter.

That’s what I like about Impressionism, it’s not making me think too hard which a lot of later modern styles do.

I’ve thought a lot about the mural on our wall at home (I can’t find the link at the moment, but it’s here somewhere on this blog) and I think it’s a mixture of Romanticism and Impressionism. So, even back then when I had no idea about art, it still kind of spoke to me.

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And there’s this picture I also found in the Orsay. I have no idea what this is all about.